Universalist Theology from Colossians

God, Life 0

Paul knows nothing of a theology in which God does not ultimately achieve his purposes….

It is God’s covenant purpose that his world will one day be reconciled in Christ.  For now, only the Church shares in that privilege, but this is not a position God has granted his people so they can gloat over the world.  On the contrary, the Church must live by gospel standards and proclaim its gospel message so that the world will come to share in the saving work of Christ.

— Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist, p. 47, 53

Shattered Dreams

God, Life, Trials 0

God goes to work to help us see more clearly.  One way He works is to allow our lower dreams to shatter.  He lets us hurt and doesn’t make it better.  We suffer and He stands by and does nothing to help, at least nothing that we’re aware we want Him to do.

In fact, what He’s doing while we suffer is leading us into the depths of our being, into the center of our soul where we feel our strongest passions.

It’s there that we discover our desire for God.  We begin to feel a desire to know Him that not only survives all our pain, but actually thrives in it until that desire becomes more intense than our desire for all the good things we still want.  Through the pain of shattered lower dreams, we wake up to the realization that we want an encounter with God more than we want the blessings of life.  And that begins a revolution in our lives.

— Larry Crabb, Shattered Dreams, p. 4

Repentance and Rest

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The Lord spoke through Isaiah when he said, “In repentance and rest is your salvation” (30:15).  I love how those two words go together — repentance and rest.  When we repent, we can rest in the Lord.  We can’t rest peacefully in God’s presence if we haven’t repented, and so the continual process of repentance is key to staying close to Him in our daily lives….

A. W. Tozer wrote, “Prayer will become effective when we stop using it as a substitute for obedience.”  Ouch!  He saw that we often pray that we will obey — we pray for patience, for compassion, or that we would be free from covetousness — yet we do not take the actions necessary to actually abide by Christ’s teachings in those areas.

— Brooke Boon, Holy Yoga, p. 43-47

Our Greatest Pleasure

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Not only do we want what immediately feels good and dislike what in fact is good for us, but we’re also out of touch with what would bring us the most pleasure if it were given to us….

The highest dream we could ever dream, the wish that if granted would make us happier than any other blessing, is to know God, to actually experience Him.  The problem is that we don’t believe this idea is true.  We assent to it in our heads.  But we don’t feel it in our hearts.

We can’t stop wanting to be happy.  And that urge should prompt no apology.  We were created for happiness.  Our souls therefore long for whatever we think will provide the greatest possible pleasure.  We just aren’t yet aware that an intimate relationship with God is that greatest pleasure.

— Larry Crabb, Shattered Dreams, p. 2

God Giving Through Us

God, Gratitude 0

It will not help much if we simply remind ourselves:  God gives to the ungrateful, and so should we.  But it will help if we remember that it’s God who gives when we give.  For then we need to deflect gratitude that comes to us anyway.  We are not its proper addressees.  God is.  And if we are convinced that gratitude doesn’t properly belong to us, then ingratitude doesn’t touch us.  We are not disrespected by ingratitude; our pride is not injured.  The ingratitude of recipients wrongs not us but the gift-giving God — the God whose goodness “gladly loses its good deed on the unthankful.”  And so we too continue to give, even to the ungrateful.

The self in whom Christ is active is modest.  It doesn’t give in order to aggrandize itself, prove its moral worth, or demonstrate its power.  It can forget itself in the act of giving and reach out to neighbors in love — it gives in order to delight in others and to help them in their needs.

— Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, p. 115

God wants to bless us.

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There’s never a moment in all our lives, from the day we trusted Christ till the day we see Him, when God is not longing to bless us.  At every moment, in every circumstance, God is doing us good.  He never stops.  It gives Him too much pleasure.  God is not waiting to bless us after our troubles end.  He is blessing us right now, in and through those troubles.  At this exact moment, He is giving us what He thinks is good.

There, of course, is the rub.  He gives us what He thinks is good, what He knows is good.  We don’t always agree.

— Larry Crabb, Shattered Dreams, p. 1-2

Why Christ Died

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Christ did not die to save us from suffering but from ourselves.  He did not die to save us from injustice, far less from justice, but from being unjust.

He died that we might live — but live as he lives, by dying as he died, who died to himself that he might live unto God.  If we do not die to ourselves, we cannot live to God.  And he that does not live to God is dead.

— George MacDonald, Your Life in Christ, p. 149-150

The Feeding of the Five Thousand

God, Healing, Letting Go, Trust 0

Another important part of the miracle is Jesus’ concern for the fragments, because he is always concerned about the broken things, the broken people.  Only when we realize that we are indeed broken, that we are not independent, that we cannot do it ourselves, can we turn to God and take that which he has given to us, no matter what it is, and create with it.

— Madeleine L’Engle, The Rock That Is Higher, quoted in Glimpses of Grace, compiled by Carole F. Chase, p. 63

Our Way of Living

Compassion, God, Gratitude, Life 0

If we believe that God has given us everything, then giving will be our way of living.  We’ll still work to earn, because the gift of work is the primary means by which God gives what we have.  But earning and possessing will become folded into giving.  God gives us life, powers, abilities, and so we earn and possess.  We’ll earn and possess so we can give, as when we share our food with the hungry; we’ll give even while earning, as when we create goods and offer services with dedication, care, and wisdom; and we’ll give even by possessing, as when we open our home for others to enjoy.  Earning and possessing are not just a bridge between our desires and their satisfaction.  They are a midpoint in the flow of gifts:  from God to us, and through us to others.  We give because we have been given to; we don’t let others simply fend for themselves because we haven’t been left to fend for ourselves.

— Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge:  Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, p. 107-108